A MAN from Rayleigh has just walked 80 miles to Norwich to raise funds for a school in a Kenya.

Joe Hayden, 69, of Trinity Road, a former lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University in Chelmsford, spent five days on his trek.

He was raising the money for To Kenya with Love, a charity which is building a nursery and primary school in a slum area of Kisumu, Kenya’s third largest city.

He said: “We desperately need to raise the funds to complete the toilet block for the school.

“When all the sponsorship money has been collected in, the charity will be some £3,000 better off, which will go a long way towards finishing the loos.”

Joe and his wife Gill, 64, got involved with the project thanks to a friend who was already working for the charity Gill was Joe’s backup team while he walked to Norwich.

He said: “She had all the equipment, would drive ahead of me and walk back to meet me so we arrived at the next destination together.

“I chose Norwich, because it was a distance I thought I could do and the flat countryside of East Anglia and the weather were perfect.”

He added: “When you are out on the road you realise what a long way a mile is and you also discover you’ve got leg muscles you never knew were there that are screaming at you.”